


The Best is Yet to Come

by lostangelssong



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Anime, Bromance, Drinking, Gen, Metal Gear?!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 03:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostangelssong/pseuds/lostangelssong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did Philanthropy get started?<br/>With Beer, Anime, and lots of snarking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best is Yet to Come

Snake sighed, staring at the apartment door and wondering how it had come to this.  _It never ends this way in any of the action movies, with the hero standing outside of his friend’s place._

 But then, Snake guessed that he’d  already gotten his action movie ending.  He’d gotten into a fist fight on top of a world-destroying robot with his twin brother, and _then_ had gotten to ride off into the Alaska sunset with the girl. 

 The problem with the movies is that they never showed what happened after the credits rolled.  Which was why he was currently debating on whether he wanted to sneak into Otacon’s place or do something more mundane like knock on the door.  And really, it probably said something about him that Snake was _here,_ at Otacon’s door, as opposed to anywhere else.  After everything that had happened, why had he picked Otacon’s place to crash?

 Well, the answer to that was actually simple.  Otacon was probably the only person that Snake knew that _wouldn’t_ try to pull him back into the whole spy mess.  He was also probably the closest thing to a friend that Snake had.  And he probably didn’t know too much about love, so Snake didn’t have to worry about him asking about Meryl.

 The image of Sniper Wolf dying in the snow rose unbidden in Snake’s mind, followed by Otacon asking Snake what they were fighting for.  Hell.  Maybe Otacon knew more about this sort of shit than Snake had originally thought.

 That decided it.  He was knocking on the damn door.  It was too much of a pain in the ass to sneak in when one was carrying a case of beer anyway.  Snake knocked – three sharp raps.  Otacon opened the door, and blinked, looking surprised to see Snake there.

 “Snake?  What are you doing here?  It’s three in the morning!” 

 “Sorry.  I must still be on Alaska time.”  Snake noted that Otacon didn’t look like he’d been woken up by the visit at the late hour.  “Are you gonna let me in, or are we going to have this discussion in the hall?”

 “Oh!  Sorry!  Sure.  Come in.  The place is kind of a mess,” Otacon said, moving aside to let Snake by.

 Snake walked in, looking around.  The place _was_ kind of a mess, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d been expecting it to be.  There weren’t clothes thrown everywhere or anything.  It looked lived in, and there seemed to be a work-bench or something in one of the far-corners with a half-constructed… something on it.  Snake couldn’t really tell what from halfway across the apartment. 

 But Otacon’s next words snapped him to attention faster than being spotted in Shadow Moses ever could.

 “Where’s Meryl, Snake?”

 “I don’t want to talk about her, Otacon,” was the only answer that he gave in reply to that.

 “But—“

 Clearly, diversionary tactics were needed.  Snake couldn’t believe that he was saying this as he turned to look at Otacon.

 “You said you’d have to show me these animes of yours some time.  Well it’s some time.  I brought the beer.  This is the only chance that you’re going to get.”

 Otacon blinked.  Maybe Snake would tell him what was going on and why he was here later.  “Well… I just torrented the latest episode of Policenauts,” he finally said, trying to figure out where to start with showing Snake anime.

 Snake _stared_ at Otacon blankly for a few moments before shaking his head.  “I understood maybe half of the words in that sentence, Otacon, and I don’t even want to _know_ how you use the word torrent as a verb.  But sure.  Why not?”

 It took a copious amount of beer, a large amount of snarking from Snake, and at least half of the episodes of the Policenauts OAV, but Snake finally somehow ended up telling Otacon why he was at his place at stupid o’clock in the morning.  It probably was because Otacon wasn’t _pushing_ to know.  He just was willing to explain the silly animes or whatever and drink with Snake.   Or at least order them takeout from some open all-night Chinese place while Snake drank.

 “I just… it wasn’t working.  And I told her that.  Alaska was good.  It was quiet, it was nice.  And she kept… I don’t know.  Wanting more?  She said I spent more time with the dogs than I did with her.”  Snake was bad at relationships.  He _knew_ that.  “I told her I wanted to go back to fighting.  That I could never be normal.”  Snake snorted and rolled his eyes.  “She said all the stories she heard about me were true.  I tried to tell her that from the beginning.  I don’t know what she was expecting.”  He still didn’t know if he had told Meryl that because it was _true_ , or because it was what he thought she wanted to hear, and because no other explanations had _worked_.  And he had perhaps drank a bit too much to figure that out now.

 Otacon considered Snake for a bit.  “So what are you going to do now?” he asked.

 “Drink more beer,” Snake said after considering it for a moment.  “Maybe I’ll figure out the answer.”  He considered the screen meditatively.  “How many more episodes of this _are_ there?”

 Otacon smiled brightly.  “We’re just getting started, Snake.”

 They were midway through some series about a guy with crazy eyebrows that gave incomprehensible speeches about the nature of war, who was either trying to start (or was it trying to _avert_ – Snake wasn’t sure anymore) World War 7, that featured kids piloting giant robots when Otacon said something that drew his attention and pulled him away from his snarking.

 “Snake… I’ve been thinking.”

 “Goddammit, here it comes,” Snake muttered.

 “What do you mean?” Otacon asked, blinking.

 “This is the part where you inevitably ask me if I’m a bad enough dude to save the president or something,” Snake said, rolling his eyes.  “That’s how this nonsense goes.  And then I inevitably have to sneak in somewhere with nothing but a pack of cigarettes and a knife – if I’m lucky – and save the president, or destroy a walking killer death machine, or defeat my commanding officer, who is also trying to kill me and is in charge of the whole scheme, or _something._ ”

 Otacon laughed in startled surprise.  “This isn’t a sneaking mission, Snake,” he said.   “But I figured I’d let you know about this, since if you _are_ serious about going back to fighting, you’re going to need to know.  Someone released the plans for Rex onto the internet.  So every organization, branch of the military, and what have you is trying to develop their own Metal Gear now.”

 “Metal Gear?!” Snake stared at Otacon for a few long moments.  “Who could have done that?” he asked slowly.

 “I don’t know.  I’m surprised you hadn’t heard the news.”

 Snake snorted softly.  “I’ve been in Alaska, Otacon.  It’s easy to avoid the news up there depending on where you are.”

 “Well… I was thinking… if you don’t want to go back to the military, then maybe you and I could start our own organization to deal with this sort of thing.  An anti-Metal Gear organization. We could stop anything like Shadow Moses from happening again.  We could call it… Philanthropy!”

 Snake blinked.  “How much of the beer did _you_ drink, Otacon?  Philanthropy isn’t two guys running around blowing up Metal Gears!  Philanthropy is what old rich guys with too much money do.  You know, like giving a bunch of money to charities they don’t really care about, or giving poor guys a cow farm, or buying orphans brain transplants or something.”

 “No, Snake!  We’d be helping people, potentially all around the world.  That’s the definition of philanthropy!” Otacon argued.

 “By blowing up giant robots,” Snake countered.  “You just want to be like one of the heroes in one of those animes you’ve been showing me.”

 “No!  Well… maybe,” Otacon admitted.  “But the point is we’d be helping people.  And you wouldn’t necessarily have to go back to the army.  I’m sure I could even make sure we got recognized by the UN, so we weren’t running around like vigilantes or anything.”

 Snake blinked.  “You’ve given this some thought,” he said. 

 Otacon flushed a little.  This was the kind of thing you thought about, but didn’t actually _talk_ about.  But now he had mentioned it to Snake, who maybe seemed to be willing to consider it.

 And Snake _was_ considering it.   Otacon was right – Metal Gear was a threat.  And if everyone and their _dog_ had access to the plans and could potentially build their own… well that could be dangerous.  And he’d be damned if he was ready to go back on another mission for the Colonel or FOXHOUND or the Special Forces or any of that. 

 “All right,” Snake said finally. “We can talk about the specifics in the morning.  I think I need some sleep now.  And we’re out of beer.  We can talk about the ridiculous name then.”

 “What’s wrong with Philanthropy?” Otacon asked.

 “Maybe it’s not so bad.  We can talk about it when we have more beer,” Snake said, settling on the couch.

 “All right, Snake.  I think we could both use some sleep.  I’ll see you later,” Otacon said, before getting up and snapping off the TV.  They could both use some rest.  Saving the world could wait until morning.


End file.
